Why Don't You Upgrade in Place?
Is there a reason to upgrade your SQL Server in place instead of building a new instance? Andy Warren has a few thoughts today on why this might be the right choice.
2023-12-20
5,386 reads
Andy Warren
Restore With Standby; A Review and A Lesson Learned
A lesson learned when trying to restore backups with standby. You can't upgrade versions.
2023-09-25
9,238 reads
Monitoring the Number of Connections
Monitoring your SQL Server is important. This article examines one of the metrics you might want to keep an eye on.
2021-02-26 (first published: 2019-02-26)
46,341 reads
A Pattern Based Approach to Masking Errors
A few years ago I had a requirement to allow both developers and customers to see rows from a table used to store error information while making sure that any PII, PCI or similar sensitive data was not displayed. The tolerance for “oops” was low! This article presents one way to solve the challenge by […]
2020-04-27
1,763 reads
Worst Practices - Objects Not Owned by DBO
Last week Andy launched a new series about Worst Practices by talking about why the Hungarian naming convention is bad for column names. This week he's at it again, declaring that the practice of having objects owned by anyone other than dbo is BAD! Agree or disagree, we think you'll enjoy reading this article and adding your thoughts to the discussion!
2019-08-01 (first published: 2002-09-12)
38,419 reads
Worst Practices - Part 1 of a Very Long Series!
Andy starts a new series about Worst Practices - come find out why and read about the first one on his list - using Hungarian Notation for column names!
2019-08-01 (first published: 2001-10-09)
34,391 reads
Error Logging Gone Wild
Many of have applications that log errors to a table. Ever thought about what happens when an application starts to throw a lot of errors? This article looks at the problem and some of the responses you might consider having ready in case it happens to you!
2016-10-11
1,805 reads
If SQL Server Runs on Linux, What's Left for April Fools Day
It’s still a bit hard to believe that SQL Server will soon run on Linux. If you think back to the early days of SQL 7, 2000, even 2005, who would have bet any money on it ever happening?
2016-04-01
2,222 reads
Time to Rebrand
I became a SQL guy back in 1998 because the company that hired me used SQL Server. It’s been a good ride and it’s paid the bills, but after 15 years or so it’s time to do something different.
2015-04-01
6,297 reads
Solid State Tapes–Prelaunch News!
In the world of data it’s always been about speed. SSD’s have become very common on consumer machines and not unusual in corporate datacenters.
2014-03-31
3,135 reads
Blogs
Learn Better: Pause to Review More
By Brian Kelley
If you want to learn better, pause more in your learning to intentionally review.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-Gen: Bring on the IOPS
By John
If you’ve used Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose, you know the drill: to...
SQL, MDX, DAX – the languages of data
By DataOnWheels
Ramblings of a retired data architect Let me start by saying that I have...
Forums
Two foreign keys to the same table. Can't cascade deletes.
Not sure if this is really a relational theory question but it seems about...
Connecting Power BI to SSAS and effective user not working
Hi everyone, Below is a consolidated summary of what we validated Architecture & data...
High Availability setup - has anyone seen this method?
Hi all, I recently moved to a new employer who have their HA setup...
Question of the Day
Encoding URLs
I have this data in a SQL Server 2025 table:
CREATE TABLE Response ( ResponseID INT NOT NULL CONSTRAINT ResponsePK PRIMARY KEY , ResponseVal VARBINARY(5000) ) GOIf I want to get a value from this table that I can add to a URL in a browser, which of these code items produces a result I can use? See possible answers